Israel Vows Harsher Attacks on Gaza as Sides Draw Nearer to War

(Bloomberg) -- Israel vowed to step up its attacks on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip after two women were killed by militant rocket fire, edging the latest eruption of violence closer to the brink of war.

“The conclusion of the meeting is to further increase the force and pace of the attacks,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday after huddling with top security officials. “Hamas will receive blows here that it did not expect.”

His government had called up 3,000 reserves soldiers even before reports of the first fatalities on the Israeli side. Military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus said troops were being sent to the border with the coastal strip to bolster defenses in case militants tried to attack through cross-border underground tunnels.

They weren’t being dispatched for a ground invasion, but “for those of you hoping for a quick return to normal activity, that does not seem to be the case,” Conricus told reporters in a phone briefing. The Ynet news website reported that tanks were also on their way to the frontier.

Gaza militants began firing hundreds of rockets at southern Israel on Monday evening, in a sharply escalated spillover from weeks of clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in contested Jerusalem. The holy city, home to Jewish, Muslim and Christian shrines, lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and competing claims to it have underpinned the latest confrontation.

Repeated Skirmishes

Israeli aircraft have been pounding militant facilities including infiltration tunnels and rocket production sites, as well as apartment buildings where gunmen have been present, since the bombardment began.

Palestinian officials have said 28 people, including nine children, have been killed in what Netanyahu characterized as hundreds of raids. Witnesses, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said a rocket launched by Palestinian militants fell short on Monday and landed on a house in Gaza, killing nine people, including three children.

Israel and Gaza have skirmished repeatedly since Hamas militants wrested control of Gaza in 2007, and fought three wars, the last seven years ago. Egypt, which historically has been involved in efforts to defuse violence between the sides, said it has been contacting regional and international actors this time, too. The U.S., European Union and United Nations have all urged de-escalation.

Jerusalem Unrest

The unrest began at the beginning of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan in April. Israeli restrictions on gathering at a traditional Ramadan meeting place outside the Old City touched off the tensions, but after they were lifted, protests were rekindled by the threatened evictions of Palestinians from longtime homes in the eastern sector of the city that Israel captured in 1967.

Israel Coalition Talks Shaken by Clashes With Palestinians

The violence is flaring at a time when Netanyahu’s rivals are trying to piece together a government after the fourth election in two years, and it has already impeded those efforts.

Mansour Abbas, head of the Islamist United Arab List faction, froze negotiations to join a potential coalition headed by the Jewish nationalist Naftali Bennett and secular centrist Yair Lapid, citing the ongoing flareup, which has sparked Israeli Arab protests against the conduct of Israeli security forces and several attacks on Israeli civilians.

The coalition could have been sworn in “in a few days,” Lapid said on Monday, as clashes raged in Jerusalem. But the lethal surge in violence with Gaza has made it awkward for Abbas to join a Zionist-led government at this time and set aside the historical identification between Arab Israelis and their Palestinian brothers and sisters in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

The political turmoil has been closely intertwined with Netanyahu’s corruption trial because if he loses power, he also loses his opportunity to derail the legal proceedings through legislation shielding an incumbent leader from prosecution.

Normalization Assailed

The Israeli operations have sparked a backlash in the United Arab Emirates, which late last year became the first Gulf Arab state to normalize relations with Israel. UAE diplomatic adviser Anwar Gargash said in a tweet Tuesday that his country had come under criticism for the recent accord, and voiced support for a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with east Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

Arab foreign ministers met virtually Tuesday to discuss the clashes in Jerusalem. Qatar’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who led the meeting, called on Arab and Muslim countries and the international community “to confront the despicable racist approach that’s lasted decades against Muslim and Christian holy sites, and that starts with ending all support for Israeli forces.”

Netanyahu has said Israel has always and will continue to allow freedom of worship in Jerusalem, but won’t tolerate violent disturbances.

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